


No Reason

by zeldadestry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-26
Updated: 2011-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:10:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam doesn’t think he knows, has ever known, or ever will know anyone who loves like that, who just gives to each and every person they meet, no questions asked, no evaluation of whether or not the other is worthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Reason

“Ok,” Dean says, shoving aside a dusty stack of papers, “no more research on Bad Momma today. I’m taking a, what do they call it? Mental health afternoon.”

Sam doesn’t bother to look up from his laptop. “It’s a mental health day.”

“Yeah, not in this lifetime. We’d be lucky to get more than ninety minutes of free time without the bat signal going off.”

“You’re not Batman.”

“Yeah, and this ain’t Gotham,” Dean says, flipping through the local free weekly newspaper he picked up at the front desk, “but hey, movie listings!”

“A break’s probably a good idea,” Sam says, thinking over how down Dean’s been lately.

“Yeah? Something you wanna see?”

“Nah,” Sam kicks his feet up on the chair across from him. “I’m beat, I’m gonna crash here and grab a nap.”

“You suck,” Dean says, getting up to pull on his jacket. “Later, loser.”

Sam lets out a big yawn. He hasn’t slept so well since shooting Samuel. “Don’t hate on my beauty sleep.”

“Take more than a nap to make you pretty, Sasquatch.”

 

Sam tries, he does, but, after almost an hour of switching from side to side under the covers and still seeing Samuel’s face every time he closes his eyes, he gets out of bed and heads to the motel’s lobby, where he noticed a “take a free book!” box when they checked in. It’s still there, squished into a corner, but the selection’s ass. There’s a dozen romance novels, a dozen horror novels (like Sam doesn’t get enough of that shit from day to day life and of course they always get the details wrong, anyway), several pamphlets declaring Arbor Day a nefarious plot (hey, that could be true, in Sam’s experience it’s better not to discount the possibility that anything’s secretly demon run), a shiny new biography of something called a Justin Bieber that certainly doesn’t look old enough to require a book documenting its life, and, at the very bottom of the pile, an extremely battered copy of “The Brothers Karamazov” that Sam stares at for a long moment before chucking it back in the box and returning to their room empty handed.

 

“This is one of those books,” Emma, Sam’s English lit T.A. at Stanford said, holding her copy of “The Brothers Karamazov” against her chest, “that will stay with you your whole life.”

Sam hadn’t believed her at the time. He’d been appreciating the lazy quiet of late afternoon office hours, the dust motes spiraling through the beams of sun, the fresh breeze from the open windows, and the certainty that he was free for that entire day and every tomorrow after it.

If Emma noticed his drifting attention, she was too cool to mention it. She leaned back in her own chair, stretched out her legs to the side, mirroring Sam’s posture. His eyes drifted down to the tattoos circling her ankles. “You can look,” Emma said, and Sam took her at her word, bent over enough to see the blue text that read, around each ankle, “Let us first of all and before all be kind.”

He smiled, but he felt his face heat, too, because he did not really understand how the story could matter so much to her. “You’re in love with Dostoevsky, aren’t you?”

She tapped the underside of his chin with the top of her bare foot. “Yup.” When Sam sat up, she was staring at him, eyes big behind her glasses. “What are you most passionate about?”

“I’m going to be a lawyer.”

“Oh?”

“But that’s-” Sam held his own copy of the book tighter in his hands.

“Your dream?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, yeah, but, passion, like you said, I just - there’s only my girlfriend. That’s what, who, I care most about.”

“That’s sweet,” Emma said, without sarcasm, but he felt uncomfortable anyway, like she knew something about him now, suspected every harsh memory he was trying to avoid reliving.

At the end of the term, when she returned their reading journals after she’d checked them, she’d written, under Sam’s heading, ‘Which brother am I most like?’, “Ask yourself this question again in ten years. Most people find the answer changes. Mine has.”

“Of course you’re Alyosha,” Jess said, as together they pushed their shopping cart up and down the aisles of Palo Alto’s gargantuan Whole Foods.

“Yeah?” Sam echoed, and didn’t mind putting on a little hesitance, uncertainty, because Jess always made a show of insecurity worthwhile.

“Baby, of course!” she said, coming to a stop in front of a display of overpriced bath salts, and wrapping her arms around his waist. “You care about people, and you try to do the right things.”

“I do,” he’d agreed, and accepted every kiss as his reward.

He felt like the devout and compassionate Alyosha around Jess, he really did, because he adored her so completely. But sometimes by revering her he made her into an icon, stripped away her flesh and pretended she was an image, fixed, unchanging, always exactly as he first believed her to be. She used to talk about wanting to travel after graduation, and he’d always just assume she meant the two of them, together, but she never specified that, and he never asked. And after the third and final time she’d suggested a threesome and he’d said no, he didn’t want to sleep with any other girl, she’d said, yeah, but maybe I do, and he’d pretended not to hear her. When he remembers all the nights he lay beside her, claiming to be someone he wasn’t, lying to her about who he really was, but also lying to himself about who she really was, it’s hard not to hate himself a little.

The quote Sam remembers now from the book isn’t the one from Emma’s tattoo. It’s: you should love for no reason, like Alyosha. Sam doesn’t think he knows, has ever known, or ever will know anyone who loves like that, who just gives to each and every person they meet, no questions asked, no evaluation of whether or not the other is worthy. Before he’d ever met any, he’d imagined angels might offer that, but, yeah, call that the stupidest hope ever and dash it to pieces.

Except what about Dean? What about what Dean said to Sam and Bobby over Rufus’s fresh grave? Dean may not start loving for no reason, but no reason will stop Dean’s love, once it exists. Wasn’t that what Dean was really saying to them? There’s nothing they’ve ever done, nothing they ever could do, that would make Dean cut them off, disown them.

Sam gets up and puts on his jacket, walks down the street from the motel until he reaches the town’s five-screen movie theater. Despite the peeling exterior paint, the lobby’s kind of swank. It’s the type of place that caters to the indie film crowd, and sells red wine and super dark chocolate along with the soda and Snickers. Sam figures Dean’s probably made it through one movie already and will need refills on his provisions, so he slaps a ten down on the concessions counter. Sam knows Dean’s not watching either of the subtitled films, so he peeks into the thriller first, then the comedy. Of course where Dean’s actually sitting is in front of the screen showing “Rango”, snickering from the otherwise empty back row at Johnny Depp playing a cartoon salamander, or gecko, or what the fuck ever, it’s not like Sam has time to catalogue the details of movie trailers, although it’s precisely the kind of trivia that will get stuck rattling around Dean’s brain forever.

Dean’s up and moving towards him before Sam even starts heading down his aisle. “What’s wrong?” he hisses.

“Nothing,” Sam says. “Here,” he hands over his goodies, “I got you snacks.”

“Beer! Thanks.”

“That’s to share.”

“No way, get your own.”

Sam follows Dean back to the middle of the row and sits down beside him. As soon as Dean’s got the beer bottle resting in the cupholder between them and the nachos settled on his lap, Sam leans in and kisses him, licks every trace of leftover chocolate and caramel from his mouth before he finally pulls away.

“Dude,” Dean says, breathy and dazed, “I’ve just been Samhandled.”

And that’s just the sleaziest, greatest line Sam’s ever heard. From now on, he declares to himself, anytime he puts the moves on anyone, he’s always gonna end the show by saying, in his deepest, most self-consciously manly voice: you’ve just been Samhandled! “You know it,” he smirks.

“What was that for?” Dean says, apparently still mystified.

Sam turns in towards him again, brushes the back of his hand against Dean’s cheek and kisses his left temple, between his eyebrows, both corners of his mouth. “No reason,” he whispers.

“Sammy, I missed you,” Dean says, and then clears his throat and looks away.

“I know,” Sam says. “Me, too.” Dean obviously meant while Sam’s soul was in hell, and Sam sees no reason to risk his dignity by admitting that just this afternoon turned out to be one separation too many for him. “Shut up and eat your nachos.” Dean turns his attention back to the movie and Sam sits in the dark beside him, listening to each crunch of corn chips and slurp of beer, to every single laugh.


End file.
